
* J.M. Ian Salas
* E-mail: salas@hsph.harvard.edu
* Version 1.0, 2/28/15
* Latest version available at http://j.mp/DataAndCode

This zip file contain three datasets:

1) NSW_MW_1983-2013.dta
2) ADR_MWcomparison_monthly.dta
3) DLR_MWcomparison_quarterly.dta

The first dataset contains the state-level minimum wage series used in the following papers by
Neumark, Salas, and Wascher:

a) "Revisiting the minimum wage-employment debate: Throwing out the baby with the bathwater?"
   Industrial and Labor Relations Review 67(3), 2014, pp. 608-648.
b) "More on recent evidence on the effects of minimum wages in the United States"
   IZA Journal of Labor Policy 3:24, 2014, pp. 1-26.

It contains two minimum wage series: NSW1, which was used in (a), and NSW2, which was used in 
(b). NSW1 covers the period 1990m1-2011m6 and was compiled from information obtained from the 
Tax Policy Center, January issues of the Monthly Labor Review, and state government websites. 
NSW2 is an updated version of NSW1 which extends coverage to 1983m1-2013m12 and revises the 
following entries:

AR: $5.85 on 2008m7,     should have been $6.25
CO: $7.28 on 2010m1-m12, should have been $7.25
CT: $4.25 on 1991m4-m8,  should have been $4.27
FL: $5.15 on 2005m5-m6,  should have been $6.15
MN: $5.85 on 2008m7,     should have been $6.15
NV: $7.55 on 2009m6,     should have been $6.85
NV: $7.55 on 2010m7-m12, should have been $8.25
NJ: $5.05 on 1997m9,     should have been $5.15
NM: $6.50 on 2008m8-m9,  should have been $6.55
WA: $4.90 on 1997m9,     should have been $5.15
WI: $6.50 on 2008m8-m9,  should have been $6.55

We verified that for everything reported in (a), the results were not sensitive to applying 
these changes.

The second dataset compares NSW2 to the monthly minimum wage series used in Allegretto, Dube, 
and Reich's (ADR) 2011 paper in Industrial Relations. The third dataset compares NSW2 to the 
quarterly minimum wage series used in Dube, Lester, and Reich's (DLR) 2010 paper in the 
Review of Economics and Statistics. We note that there are quite a number of discrepancies 
between the minimum wage series that we compiled and the ones used in ADR or DLR.

To preserve consistency across studies in (a), which was mainly a replication exercise,
we used the QCEW dataset provided by DLR, including the minimum wage series they compiled.
For the CPS analysis, since we already depart from ADR by using aggregated state-level data 
instead of micro data, we opted to use the minimum wage series that we compiled (NSW1).

We followed this same strategy in (b), except for one case (the DLR falsification test) where 
it turned out that correcting a specific discrepancy mattered (MD: $6.15 on 2006q1-q2, should 
have been $5.15). In the analysis of longer-term models with leads and lags, for which we 
couldn't replicate the results in Allegretto, Dube, Reich, and Zipperer's (ADRZ) 2013 working 
paper -- and they wouldn't share their data and code with us -- we used the updated minimum 
wage series (NSW2) that has additional years required by the analysis.
